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Children's health and food
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How we are working to shape healthier and more equitable food environments.
In the UK, one of the key environments which shapes what families eat is the supermarket, with almost 90% of UK retail grocery sales happening there. The products sold by large food retailers, and how these products are priced and promoted, have a huge impact on our diets. We’re trying to make the best use of all assets available to us as a charitable foundation, where we are both a grantmaker and institutional investor, in order to realise this opportunity.
When we enter a supermarket, we’re influenced by lots of simple cues in the environment. The promotions that are placed at the end of the aisles, the impulse purchases at the checkouts, and the special offers that catch our eye, all end up shaping what’s in our bags.
Findings from the behavioural sciences have consistently shown that what people eat is strongly influenced by these kinds of cues, and that the effect is particularly strong when we are in stressful situations – the sorts of situations often caused by living under financial strain. These findings have also been repeated in our research conversations with families living in Lambeth and Southwark. When you’re trying to juggle many different priorities, cost and convenience are key.
Knowing all of this, it’s clear that supermarkets have a crucial role to play in helping to make healthy options easier. By working to increase sales of nutritious food and to reduce the flood of high fat, sugar and salt products, there’s a clear opportunity to make changes that are good for both businesses and public health.
Our work on trying to break the link between low income and poor nutrition has shown us the importance of tackling an issue from multiple angles. One of the ways that this gets put into practice is through our dual role across philanthropy and investment.
An example is our partnership with the Collaboration for Healthier Lives UK, where we’re funding the evaluation of an industry-led programme exploring what supermarkets and manufacturers can do to improve the health of their consumers. Led by Tesco and Danone as Co-Chairs, the first phase of trials took place in stores in Lambeth and Southwark and found that by making changes, companies were successfully able to increase sales of healthier foods, and reduce sales of unhealthy foods, with no negative impact on business.
As part of a foundation with a permanent endowment, we are also working towards an investment portfolio that has a positive health impact as well as achieving financial returns. We recently added an investment engagement function to influence the corporate behaviours of our investments to help support our mission. Environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, such as the healthiness of foods sales, are a performance issue which affects long-term value. Companies that increase their sale of healthier foods are likely to be more competitive in the future due to increasing regulation on unhealthy foods and rising consumer demand for healthy products.
“ By making changes, companies were successfully able to increase sales of healthier foods, and reduce sales of unhealthy foods, with no negative impact on business. Trial of stores in Lambeth and Southwark
By making changes, companies were successfully able to increase sales of healthier foods, and reduce sales of unhealthy foods, with no negative impact on business.
As part of our commitment, we have added our voice to the coalition of shareholders led by ShareAction, a charity building the movement for responsible investment over the last decade. Recent dialogue between shareholders and Tesco has seen the company adopt a series of landmark health commitments, including a market-leading target to increase their proportion of UK and ROI sales from healthier food and drink products from 58% to 65% by 2025. Given that as a country approximately £1 in every £5 spent on food is at Tesco, changes like this will have a significant impact on the population’s diet.
Throughout these different roles, some lessons have emerged:
Over the next five years, we’ll continue our work to shape healthier and more equitable food environments, and we look forward to collaborating with a wide range of partners to achieve this.
Building on Tesco’s commitments, ShareAction is currently engaging with other supermarkets and manufacturers through the Healthy Markets programme, asking companies to play their part in enabling a healthy population.
This year, retailers and manufacturers participating in the Collaboration for Healthier Lives will also be scaling their interventions nationally, with a focus on food categories that will make the biggest difference for people shopping on a low budget. We’re excited about the opportunity to track data from this work and build evidence about the important roles that the food industry, and related policy, must play in tackling dietary inequalities.
If you’d like to get in touch about our work to create healthier food retail environments, please contact Louise Foreman.
To learn more about our Foundation’s progress as a responsible investor, contact Matthias Lomas.
Portfolio Manager Claire Stidston shares more on our pilot to engage wholesalers and convenience stores to drive uptake of healthier options.
A report from one year of the Collaboration for Healthier Lives in the UK (CHL UK)
Demonstrating how simple and practical changes can help influence retailers to purchase healthier options
Assessing the progress of the innovative collaboration that aims to drive behavioural change and positively impact consumer health.